SUNANTHA MENDOZA
Sunantha is currently finishing her undergraduate degree at the Ateneo. She attended the 34th U.P. National Writers' Workshop in Baguio as a Fellow for Fiction in English. "Myth" was one of her qualifying workshop entries.


 MYTH

        Come outside with me, you told me over the phone at two a.m., there’s a meteor shower tonight.  Then you came to my bedroom window, and the next thing I knew, I was climbing out with my heart in my belly, my eyes tearing from the sudden autumn cold.  The leaves made crunchy noises under my feet as we walked to your car.  We drove and then you stopped in front of this house.  Greg’s house, you said, he has lots of beer.  I thought we were going to watch the sky, so I said, But what about my falling stars?  And you said, I can’t give you falling stars.  So I followed you inside the house, feeling lost.

    Your friends are all downstairs.  Some of them are probably still drinking or have crashed on the living room floor.  I realize that I need to be on my way home now, but you’ve fallen asleep on the bed.  I worry about climbing into my window less clumsily later, because when you pulled me out hours ago, you almost let me fall into the prickly bushes underneath.

     I’m sitting on the carpet, by the sliding door, with my cheek pressed against the glass.  I look at the sky. The gibbous moon. The deep dark blue.  And I sigh at the thought of all the falling stars I’ve missed tonight.  And all my life. 

    You are starting to snore.  The sound is scratching against the silence, like a fork against an empty plate, and it is making me cringe.  Anyone who heard you sing in the coffee shop earlier this evening wouldn’t believe you were capable of producing such ugly sounds when you sleep. 

    Earlier this evening, before you called and showed up at my window, I went to see your band play.  You had insisted, and I couldn’t say no.  I almost got lost driving there in my mother’s car.  I was late.  I found a vacant seat by a wall, a chair that had strayed from a nearby table occupied by two other girls.  One of them had long blue hair; the other had a tiny ring pierced through a perfectly shaped eyebrow.

     Looking at those girls, I realized how sometimes I feel so conspicuous.  And it’s a funny kind of conspicuousness because I feel conspicuous to myself.  For being so plain and small and brown and weird.  The blue-haired girl looked up at me for a second and I thought, The non-weird is the weird.  Ever since I got here, I keep coming up with these creepy, pseudo-Zen thoughts.  Like sometimes, when I feel like disappearing, I tell myself, Then there will be no me to not belong.  In a twisted kind of way, I’ve never felt more oriental in my life.

     The people clapped and hooted and whistled at the end of the song I’d walked in the middle of.  You were grinning as you pulled a chair behind the mike and sat down.  You adjusted the mike stand, your guitar strap, shaded your eyes and surveyed the crowd.

     I sat still in my seat. I didn’t think you saw me but then you whispered, Hey, Carly, this is for you.  With your head bent down, you began to strum on your guitar that song by Peter Gabriel.  The one playing in your car the first time we kissed.

  When I want to run away
  I drive off in my car
  But whichever way I turn
  I come back to the place you are

    I remember that night.  Tuesday, after Mrs. Langham’s poetry class in the community college, I missed the bus.  And it was cold.  My feet in my sneakers were freezing.  On your way to the parking lot, you called out to me and asked if I needed a ride.  You have blue eyes, with little specks of green, like nothing I’ve ever seen before except on TV.  I remember the way the streetlights reflected in them that night.  I remember how I leaned forward to see them better but kissed you instead.  I don’t know who between the two of us was more surprised.  I want to touch the light, the heat I see in your eyes, in your eyes, Peter Gabriel sang in the radio, and it felt like I’d been sucked into a Hollywood movie.

    While you were singing that song tonight, I noticed a girl standing near the bass player. Her hair was long and curly and bouncy and red, and she was swaying to the music and looking intently at you with these huge eyes.  I thought I saw you wink at her once.

    I went home right after your gig, without stopping to talk to you.  You were busy anyway, talking with these people, who, as usual, I didn’t know.  And anyway, it was past midnight.  An hour or so into my sleep, the phone woke me up, and it was you.  Then, a few minutes after we hung up, you came by and pulled me out of my bedroom window.  Into the cold air.  Into a circle of strangers.  And now, here, this moonlit room.

***

     That red-haired girl in the coffee shop, as soon as you and I stepped into this house, that girl startled me by suddenly floating up to you and wrapping her pale, almost luminous arms around you.  I watched this all in slow motion, the way that girl danced on clouds down the front hall in her bare feet and long white dress.  Hi, I’m Ashley, she said, eyelashes fluttering.

     You led me to the garage, where the too-bright fluorescent light made everyone look like moon people.  They were gathered in a circle on old dirty carpets that were rolled out on the floor.  Bicycles were hanging from the ceiling, and all sorts of tools were on the walls.  You and I were greeted with laughter and cigarette smoke and marijuana smoke and the clinking of beer bottles.  You introduced me to everyone and I instantly forgot their names – except for Brian, who I’ve met before, and Greg, who owned the house.  And of course, Ashley.

     Violent girlfriend, Brian was explaining how he got the huge scar on his neck below his left ear.  Werewolf attack, he said.

     You were laughing from behind me, and whispered, Car accident.  He got thrown around five yards from his car into the freeway, you explained.  I’ll get you something to drink, you said and then left me standing there.

     Brian was telling everybody about how he lay conscious on the freeway after getting thrown out of his car.

    Do you remember flying? they asked him.

     No, Brian said.  But he said he wanted to, so he was going to find a hypnotist.  He said that all he remembered was lying in his own blood, with Pink Floyd songs going through his head and circus animals jumping around before his eyes.  All that LDS I took in high school, dude.  Uh-huh-huh.

     Everyone thought that was funny, and I made the mistake of looking around me at all the laughing faces, stoned faces, unfamiliar faces, and then behind me, at the dramatic mass of curly red hair.

     It’s really LSD, she explained to me, giggling.  Then, with her long eyelashes and full, pouty lips, she gushed, Oh, you have bee-yoo-tuh-ful hair!

     I must’ve smiled at her.

     Finally, you came back and handed me a bottle of Miller’s.  You put your arms around me.  I brushed your fingers away as they tried to go under my shirt.  Kiss me, you whispered, your breath smelling of cigarettes.  And I wanted to hit you, all of a sudden.  No, I said. 

     Eventually, you and I went out to the backyard to look at the stars.  But there were too many trees and their branches blocked out the sky.  Greg’s got too many trees, you said.  But we continued to look up anyway.  Are you cold? You want my jacket? you asked me. For some reason, you always think I’m feeling cold.  I only shook my head this time.  You said your neck hurt and so you just lay down on the grass.  I never would have thought of lying on the grass, but you – you are always doing stuff like that.
From the tangle of twigs and branches, I could see pieces of the sky.  I kept staring at the small dipper (or what I thought was the small dipper), and from the corner of my eye, saw a falling star fall.  I figured I’d imagined it.

     I always imagine it.

***

     The room is suddenly quiet and I can hear crickets outside.  Or frogs.  I sit motionless on the floor, hear you stir.

      “Carly?” you call out.

     My name is really Carla, but for some reason, you have a hard time saying the vowel at the end.  The same way I had a hard time saying Jeremy without rolling my r.  You giggle and say you love my accent, so I try to speak as little as possible.  I don’t roll the r anymore when I say your name, because I’ve practiced over and over, but you still call me Carly.

      I debate whether I should pretend not to hear you calling me.  A minute passes.  And two.  I get up, walk towards the bed.  I take off my shoes and climb in.

     “Want a blanket?” you ask me.

      I shake my head.  I lie down facing the ceiling.  I stare at all the funny shadows and faded light.  I think about you running across the lawn to my mom’s apartment earlier tonight.  I imagine you running to my bedroom window, dodging the water sprinklers, your hair flying like yellow fire. 

    You have bee-yoo-tuh-ful hair.  Self-consciously then, I touch my hair.  Limp.  Raven hair in feather strands, you would make up songs about it. 

     You reach for my hand and you say, “Your hands are so small.”  I wonder what it is that makes you think I’m so fragile, like you think I’m always cold.  I slowly pull my hand away from yours.

     A while ago, you left me sitting on the topmost stair, while you ran back down to ask Greg for a spare room where you and I could sleep.  On your way back up, Ashley came and wrapped her arms around you.  I know who she is now because you laughed and danced her around, for a while.  She giggled and giggled.  You climbed up the stairs and found me sitting there.  I didn’t say anything, but you said, Carly.  You touched my cheek and looked into my eyes and said they were like midnight pools.  Then we walked down the hallway, in the dark.

     When you look at me like that, I wonder if you can really see me.  Sometimes, you make jokes, and this last Halloween when we were in Safeway, with all the pumpkins sitting in the parking lot, you said to me, Let’s go as an interracial couple!  I thought, You go as a GI and I’ll go as a prostitute!  But I kept my mouth shut.  Besides, I would’ve said prostichoot and it would’ve tickled you.

     Sometimes I hate you.

***

     I cannot sleep.

      Across from the bed, a digital display on a stereo component is lit up in sea green.  It is blinking 12:00.  12:00.  12:00.  And I cannot sleep.  It is not twelve o’clock.  I know it is hours past twelve o’clock and I have to get out of here.

      I climb off the bed and start pacing the room. The carpet is rough under my feet.  I see the huge American flag hanging on the wall above the bed.  “How patriotic,” I murmur to myself, and then wonder why it is hanging there.  It’s all hazy purple and white in the half-light.  And below the flag, you sleep, wrapped in a blanket, like a burrito from Taco Bell.

      I am standing at the foot of the bed, my weight on one leg.  I realize I’ve been nibbling at my fingernail and quickly remove the pinky from between my lips.  I pace again.  The dimness is dizzying.

      In one corner of the room, I find a door.  I step in, turn on the light.  A bathroom.  I get disoriented for a moment, seeing myself in the mirror, flat and yellow-brown like a bruise.  My eyes have grown too accustomed to seeing you.  I splash water on my face and, hearing you starting to snore again, I switch the light off.  I walk towards my side of the bed, tripping over my shoes.

      “Jeremy.”  I shake you.  “Hey.”

      You open your eyes.  They look gray in the moonlight.  Almost transparent.

      “Jeremy,” I say.  I feel my heart beating back in my chest and I carefully form the words in my mouth, “We should go.”  We shud goe.

     You drag yourself out of bed and, noiselessly, we go down the stairs.  You say your good-byes.  Almost everyone else has crashed on the couches or on the floor, like I thought.  Outside, Brian and some guy with John Lennon eyeglasses are sitting on a curb.  You tell them, “Later.”  I pet a stray cat.

      On Washington, we come to a stop sign.  You step on the brakes and sigh. A song is ending on the radio, and I remember that Tuesday night when I kissed you because I was lonely or because you were such a stranger. 

     “Hey, that was our song,” you say to no one in particular, because I am staring out the window.  At the stars.  Somewhere far away from you.
 
 
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